When I first heard about trinkets I was intrigued: they sounded like a fun way to inject some extra variation and challenge into a run and make it feel different from other runs with the same class. Now having played with them a bit they feel a lot more situational than I thought.
In many cases they seem like I’m just spending resources to make the game more challenging and the rewards from it aren’t commensurate. Since my mindset shifts into “survival mode” after I leave the character select screen and start the game, I generally avoid even creating most of the trinkets.
However I have seen a few cases now where beginners go into trinkets with gusto and it ends up costing them the run. This is leading me to suspect that trinkets may have a “beginner trap” effect where the lure of additional rewards is not being properly offset by an informed assessment of the risks. Of course, my view of this is only anecdotal!
So I have a question for everyone: how do you see trinkets fitting with your experience in the game?
I think one danger for any roguelike — when developed over a long period of time with a stable long term community — is for development to lean too far in a direction that favours providing new challenges to experienced players. Perhaps the most infamous example of that is NetHack, a game with a sheer cliff of a learning curve. I don’t think SPD is in much danger of that any time soon. Having said that, I do still worry about beginners because of their role in growing and maintaining the health of the community for the game.
Thoughts, anyone? Evan: can you share any insights from your analytics? I am particularly concerned about mimic tooth, wondrous resin, and chaotic censer. Do beginners use these trinkets differently from experienced players? Do they impact beginners’ success rate differently from experienced players?
I’ve noticed it too. Most trinkets are definitely a beginner trap as you’ve said, they need to spend energy on alchemy recipes instead of using all their energy on “just for fun” trinkets. For advanced players, energy economy becomes very important with challenges, I squeeze every energy I get from profitless items like stone of intuition’s second use, detect magic, certain seeds. There’s no room for +3 trinket energy, I often keep them at +0 and energize it later, or immediately throw it away if it’s harmful.
I mainly wanted trinkets to accomplish two goals:
- provide a bit more run to run variance by being a sort of utiltiy item that modifies game properties or adds light new mechanics, rather than being a direct buff like other equipment.
- Encourage more use of the alchemy system via their crafting and upgrade mechanics.
I’m still not 100% happy with where trinkets are, there are still a few balance outliers and I would like to add more of them, but I do think they’re doing this job fairly well. Alchemy system usage is up across the board, and players are definitely not dieing a lot more or less with trinkets overall. It’s worth noting though that I don’t balance based on gameplay data from new players, as those numbers aren’t particular representative of how actually powerful items are. I look at data from players who have 1+ wins.
Trinkets are also designed to be flexible, it’s perfectly valid to keep them at 0 or +1 for a milder effect, if you’d prefer to not mix up your run too much.
That’s really good to hear! I’m one of those players who was already addicted to the alchemy system so that may have affected my perspective somewhat. I saw it as another thing competing for my precious alchemy energy!
I think your continued refinement of the alchemy UI has helped a lot too. Very very nice QoL changes!
I definitely just assumed they were supposed to be beneficial and didn’t think much of it until I lost a run because I upgraded the vial of blood to +3. Now I often don’t use them, or consider energizing it if I don’t get one I think will be useful.
I would prefer more just beneficial stuff having a similar survival mindset. Some trade offs I am ok with like Mimic tooth is dangerous but fun. More like that would be good.
